


Press Coverage

by EbonyGaze



Category: Manhunt (Video Games)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Disturbing Themes, Gen, Graphic Description, Horror, Psychological Horror, Trauma, Violence, disturbing behavior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:55:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22622158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EbonyGaze/pseuds/EbonyGaze
Summary: As Cash runs from the Wardogs, a red car pulls in front of him. The driver tells him to get in, and when he does, he is met with a familiar face. The Journalist explains the situation he is in and her plans to stop it. Agreeing to help her, he guides her back to her apartment, through a vile path of corruption.
Kudos: 8





	Press Coverage

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the Manhunt mission Press Coverage, but my take on it. Edited recently, some changes here and there so that Cash and the Journalist are more in character. I wrote this to explore the possible thoughts and feelings of the two characters... as best I could. Enjoy!

Two people are walking together. One falters across broken pavement — the other strides along it with more evident confidence. Whistling of the cold wind makes for undesirable company. Each crunch of the ground and click of her heels makes for worse company. It sounds like a death wish to him. Any goddamn noise. It isn’t the lady’s fault, however, not by the slightest. Neither of them are prepared for the heinous experience of a night that they’re both having. They only have each other. The well-dressed woman follows the man like a puppy obeying its master. Vengeance, an animalistic one at that, is in the forefront of his mind. A revolver is held tightly in his white-knuckled hands. Blood and muck cover his prison clothing. A dark, vicious energy that she doesn’t like but can’t ignore radiates from him, pulling him forward as though he’s being tugged by a leash.

However, he is the only Carcer City resident who she trusts: James Earl Cash, the man who is supposed to be rotting in hell for whatever crime he committed. Facing consequences in the afterlife. Had the injection taken him, he would’ve learned what the afterlife had in store for him. But here he is, a dead man- flesh and bone- breathing, thinking, and walking a few feet ahead of her. Not a figment of her imagination she tries to remind herself. The execution was a hoax, a cover up for Carcer City’s corrupt agenda. 

  
  
  
  


Cash turns around to see her catching up, her boots no help at all as she traipses with awkward, cautious steps. His drive to kill Starkweather is so strong, so robust in his core that he wishes that he didn’t care for the lady. But a part of him does, makes him feel obligated to guard her, as she is the only other person here who sees what he sees, wants what he wants. To her, he’s a witness; to him, she’s a source of companionship... sort of. What’s certain is their goal to stop the puppet master behind this madness. Madness to the majority, to the shaven-headed scowler. 

  
  
  
  


Besides, she’s no threat to him. The least he can do is reciprocate the help. He pauses, giving her time to come to his side. She watches him cautiously. Cash is surly, having a husk colder than the air, perhaps dangerous to delve a hand into. The receptacle warns her to be wary. She knows he’s a former criminal, as there is a dirty, sludgy trail of wrongdoings that follows him, according to his records. But murder isn’t his choice, maybe that can’t be said about his past — it’s now his only means of survival. But even so, he’s no stranger to it. She’d watched the way that crowbar tore through those men’s flesh with ease, the way it squeezed a torturous, life-draining wheeze from their lungs. Their carotids were severed, his face unaffected, not a twitch of remorse to be found when the blood struck it. That feral energy screams danger, and she can feel it. She doesn’t think that he will hurt her, but she could never go wrong making sure he doesn’t. But he knows none of this is her fault, that she’s on his side, not theirs. The leech’s. Carcer’s. 

  
  
  
  


She watches his black sneakers stop and turn to their left, their tips pointed toward a nearby shadow. He snatches her hand, signaling her to follow his lead, the sudden grasp startling her and causing her heart to jump. He walks hurriedly, nearly making her trip. His hand is large and calloused, having a tight grasp around hers. Smears of crimson paint the clean surface of the back of her hand, nausea rising in her stomach before the shadow engulfs her. He’s caking it with blood and other substances that she’s better off not knowing. Cash doesn’t give a fuck, though. Not at all.

  
  
  
  


“Listen to me, lady. I need you to stay here.” His brazen voice burns through the dry silence, assertive yet somewhat reassuring to her. When she gets to hear it it stays in one low octave, not once intonating, with the exception of it rising when he demanded her to park blocks away from her apartment. It has the power to make her do exactly what he says without a second thought, a bravado she acts according to. As an independent person, a vigilante once alone in trying to shut down Starkweather’s fucked up business, it’s foreign to her. She feels his breath tickle her skin, not noticing how close he was until now. Could she trust his idea? The shadow? Either or, it is her only option. Cash knows that this method worked when guiding the Tramp through the swarms of Innocentz, so it’s safe to call it useful. 

  
  
  
  


“Please don’t leave me. Wha… what if they see me here?” the Journalist stammers, all of her emotions tangling into one gigantic wad. She can barely speak, as though a string is wrapped tightly around her larynx, strangling the words. Cash’s frown somehow deepens, perhaps out of annoyance. His eyes are brown and hold an intensity that she’s never seen before, one that brings anxiety rattling in her bones.

“They won’t,” he insists, letting go of her hand so that he may drift into the darkness. When he lets go, he leaves a blotch of blood that clusters where his fingernails dug into her inner palm. In response she just nods her head meekly, watching his rugged mug turn away.

_‘She’ll be fine,’_ Cash thinks to himself, his grip returning to the revolver. Its muzzle grazes the fabric of his jeans before being poised to defend its user. Unease seizes him, clambering through his taut muscles. His drive to kill the CCPD will not be squandered, though. He can’t fuck up, he just can’t. Starkweather is so dead and the woman needs her evidence. Starkweather isn’t going to win this and it’s his mission to be sure of that. The warpath will not dwindle because of some physical faltering. _So many assholes have died to you so don’t let the hand full live._

  
  
  
  


Without much thought, the Journalist presses herself against the wall, the mere company she has until Cash comes back. Her head is flooding, vision blurring and returning to normal in her reticles. Recollections of horrific memories that she made tonight play like a film in her mind: Cash’s “execution”, the first batch of cops that he’d killed barbarically in front of her, the actual, inevitable smell of death that ensued. There’s no telling how many groups of Starkweather’s extras Cash went through. It’s all so sick and savage that it’s on the verge of unbearable, hopefully just a dream her quivering legs are forced to plow through. She doesn’t know what to do anymore, with herself, her emotions. All she can do is continue to gather evidence against that open shirt-wearing bastard. Surviving this night shouldn’t leave the notice of the public. She has one job to do and she’s resolute in making it happen before he stops her. She has to stay staunch. Get that damning evidence and his business will cease to exist. Being strong is a given… there’s no reason to back down now, especially with the help of her makeshift ally.

Ear-piercing gunshots ripple through the cold night air, snapping her out of her thoughts. Each thundering blast makes her eyes squint harder, anxiety exploding in her nervous system like fireworks. Who is shooting? Is Cash evading the officers’ bullets, or vice versa? Soon they stop, and when this is so, she turns to look around the corner, seeing smoke rise and fade into the night sky. She can’t tell if Cash is the one who shot or not, since they all are armed. Is he okay? Did he forget about her? He’s taking an awful while to return. 

She had to make sure.

The shadow is lonely again when she runs in a blind haze. Fear and anxiety control the direction of her footfalls, gaining momentum with each bold step. The body of the police department is falling apart, a sturdy sledge slowly hammering it down with a gun. She can see that there are piles of dead officers. All of them — if not, most of them. The latter, probably. Hats, revolvers, and nightsticks are strewn across the street. Skulls are shattered like eggshells, leaking the essence they once contained. Necks are bruised and crushed brutishly, bones and cartilage mangled in gut-wrenching bundles, puncturing the skin that once held them in place. Eyes are cold and nothing more than glass orbs in their sockets. A horrid smell, all too familiar to her, envelops the miasma, telling her to go away. Blood, brain matter, and cranial contents trickle over the dirty pavement, through the rocky fissures like lava oozing from a howling volcano. But there isn’t a single sign of Cash at all...

...until she hears his footsteps. Seconds later, he’s standing before her. A feeling of relief is only short-lived before anger quickly builds up in her shot nerves, causing her to shake viciously and her hands to ball into fists at her sides. The adrenaline coursing through her only helps her self-control. For a minute she was convinced that she was going to be alone for the rest of the night. She moves in closer to him, but not too close... as to avoid touching his wounds. 

  
  


“Goddamnit, Cash,” she curses, her voice cracking in her throat. “Don’t leave me behind like that again!”

In response he growls, the look on his face so foreboding that she struggles to hold eye contact with him. Her eyes meet the ground with shame, palms relaxing before she folds her arms across her chest. When she finds the courage to look at him again, she apologizes. Maybe she shouldn’t have said that — Cash is a dangerous man.

“Sorry, Cash, I... know you wanted me to stay back there but I worried when you didn’t come back so I… you scared me so I wanted to make sure everything was okay,” she tells him, nervous and full of regret.

Now in an awkward place, he only squints his eyes as he looks at her shaking form. An impervious emotional distance keeps him from returning a response with warmth or understanding. She examines the painful openings she sees, glad to know the witness is still standing, even with iron-rich blood oozing through his clothes, some of which is dribbling from his right nostril, traveling along the curve of his mouth. It enters the sliver between his lips uninvitedly, making him taste the sodium of his life essence. A cop had punched him in the face before dying to his own nightstick. The same substance from his wounds has coagulated around split skin in other areas, giving an idea as to how long this night has been dragged out for. The white fabric of his undershirt lost its purity sometime ago, now being soaked with more corrupt crimson. It reeks and feels damp, staining the Journalist’s own clothing when she subconsciously leans in to look at him, but she doesn’t mind. That’s the smallest of her concerns. She can feel the hard pounding of his heart against her chest, the epinephrine coursing through his liquid life supply. The rhythm feels real, telling her that this may not be a dream she’s dreaming...  
  


...it may actually be a reality she’s living. _Unless it‘s fake, too. This can’t really be real. Or is it…_

Cash just doesn’t know what to do about this tiny woman, or how to respond to her words. What to say, what to think. Too many thoughts are running through his mind, from the footage of his family dying to the haunting words Starkweather slithered into his head once it ended. People he knew his entire life — all dead. _‘I’m all the family you need now...’_ He grits his teeth, his fists tightening at his sides, and the reporter notices. She apologized to him tenderly, exuding compassion maybe. He sighs. In a way, he feels relieved to know that he isn’t alone in this, to be reminded that he does have an ally — the world is against him, but now he has someone to fight it with. His thick fingers curl around her upper arms, not too tight as to keep her from freaking out again, pushing her away from his heaving chest. Armies of goosebumps wash over the hairy skin of his forearms, the bitter cold nipping them, forcing the follicles to stand erect. His dark eyes dart away for a second, coming back to stare back into hers for an awkward but ephemeral moment. They hold no emotion. He swears that she flinches under his gaze — chances are he’s correct about that. 

The Journalist sees him look away and at the dead bodies in ruddied blue behind them. His hands flex around his companion’s arms, making her wince in his vise-like grasp. Underneath her sleeves tiny blood vessels are breaking, as a result of his fingers attempting to breach through the red material. Y _ou’re too strong, Cash._ The shadow had a protective hold of her, yet she risked her life only because she wanted to check on him? He’s fine. He doesn’t need to be checked on for fuck’s sake. But her? She has no idea what she just did! She needs to listen to him; if anyone is going to die, it should be Starkweather and anyone who stands in his way of stopping him. He and the reporter are two totally different people, ingrained into two different lifestyles, yet they walk through this vile path of corruption as one. Her eyes stare back at him, watching his lips turn into a snarl, then meeting his eyes, melting the tension in his arms ever so slightly — making some alien feeling brew inside of him. It might be care.

  
  
  
  
  
  


“Just stay close,” he tells her, letting go of her arms.

  
  
  
  
  
  


When their bodies depart, he notices the blood... his… the officers’... whoever’s… from his shirt staining her blazer. She looks with him, not making note of it. So passive for a stubborn woman like her. But what’s odd is that she’s calm, collected about it... how is she handling this all right? Nonchalance glosses her soft eyes, her stare, and it’s weird to him, hard to read. Shouldn’t she be nervous? Or is he missing something? Returning to his task, he reaches for her wrist and tugs at it, nudging her to follow him to her apartment. Together they step through blood puddles and squishy pieces of corrupt brain matter in mutual silence.

At this point, the Journalist feels numb — what once made her squeamish now has no emotional effect on her. No shock, nausea, nothing. It alone is a concern, an involuntary numbness that she can’t reverse by choice. What the hell is wrong with her? Shouldn’t she be throwing up at the sight of these corpses by this point? Did she not experience this a minute ago? Instead her eyes watch them pass by her clicking boots, failing to give rise to some sort of sensation, not even a pang of distress. Cash, on the other hand, still has his features twisted into a scowl. He’s so stiff, tense, but he appears deep in thought when she turns to look at him. A few minutes pass and she realizes that his skin is so goddamn hot, hotter than it already was, the heat sizzling around her arm. A growl rises in the back of his throat, and she thinks she hears it. What’s on his mind? Was it something he saw earlier? Any questions she wants to ask him stop dead in their tracks as she reminds herself to not trespass on his train of thought, to not poke the bear, so to speak. He’d probably snap at her again... or worse. _Leave him alone or you’ll end up dead, too._

  
  
  
  


That aside, she finds herself in front of her apartment door. Cash lets go of her wrist, back to the grip of his revolver.

  
  
  
  
  
  


“My place is upstairs. Here, I got the keys.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


She digs through her pocket and pulls out a ring of keys, shoving one of them into the slot carefully. She steps back and lets Cash through first, trying to stay within the black of his shadow. The towering shadow leads her to a bigger one casted by three walls next to her staircase. With a finger to her lips, he holds her in place by the shoulder, his eyes intense and unshaken. Voices belonging to middle-aged men are coming from above them, blood underneath her skin bursting through their dilated tubes. They tell each other about noises they hear, their suspicions, qualms, and their plan to bring their sneaky, soon-to-be hostages to Starkweather. Before she knows it, those voices will never speak again. 

  
  
  
  
  


“I’ll be back soon. Keep quiet,” he says lowly before the revolver is between his palms again, ascending the stairs with steadfast footsteps. Within bare moments she hears gunshots again, several of them firing in rapid succession. Another deadly scene is taking place above her. The first blast makes her nervous system explode. Heavy weights flop and hit the floor overhead, the impact causing loud thuds. One groan of pain after another, one last dying breath after another. She hears Cash groan, too, bellowing when he eats another battle wound. His gun is reloaded over and over again until every corrupt heart stops pumping black slush through their vessels. Shells clatter to the floor, through with their job once they’re still. Minutes pass by as hours to the Journalist, yet they feel like seconds to Cash. The frenzy that his head is fuzzed by seems to gorge on time, until every voice is silenced fatally by his bullets. 

The Journalist hears a pair of feet left running over the carpet upstairs. Their steps become louder and descend the staircase. As promised, Cash had checked ahead and came back to her, except not in one piece. An ache swells in his burning muscles, his breath trembling by the demand of labor. He’s bleeding even more profusely, somehow still standing and just as steadfast as before. As long as she is unscathed, there’s not much to fret about. After all he killed those bastards for her. Without mouthing a word the puppy follows her master, the cream color of the wall paint ebbing when it turns into a sticky, gory red. They enter the hallway and the Journalist grimaces when she sees how her home has become the aftermath of a death battle. Fresh blood splatters decorate the walls, dripping in red, ugly zig zags before pooling into the carpet. Brain matter and other remnants of life stick to the wall like gum does to the bottom of a desk. Ammo rolls under the soles of her feet, limbs snap and shriek under Cash’s as he walks over the bodies uncaringly, red footprints following. What a fucking mess.

She walks into her kitchen, past her bedroom, scrambling to remember where she put the evidence. Cash stays behind her to follow her steps. A room around the corner looks back at her as she moves toward its white door. She swings it open, Cash just a second behind. 

“Everything I need is in that box under the table,” she informs him, pointing a finger at the organized collection of evidence. Now they can book it and leave Carcer.

  
  
  
  


“Good. Take it and get out of town.” A part of her shrivels up and dies. What the fuck, Cash? Doesn’t he want to escape Starkweather’s circus of death, too?

  
  
  
  
  


“But… you’re not coming with me?”

  
  
  
  
  


“I’m going to deal with Starkweather personally,” he swears, balling his fist and slamming it into his open palm. His blood spikes through his veins. “Thank him for my second chance.”

  
  
  
  
  


_Oh._ A chill is delivered to her spine. She doesn’t know how to respond to that, so she continues to listen to him in silence. 

  
  
  
  
  


That said, Cash’s scowl is even meaner looking, and this time he’s gritting his teeth. His voice is tinged with anger, flames roaring in his eyes.

  
  
  
  
  


“You’re my backup if I don’t make it. Have a nice life.” Maybe there’s a trace of something like disappointment in her features because he looks at her with a hard, searching gaze before he leaves. The door behind him is pushed open, storming out to the kitchen window. She hears him open it and slide across the sill before bending over to grab the box. Before the night shrouds him with its starry cloak, he turns back at the familiar sound of her heels, making brief eye contact with her one last time when she looks at him from her kitchen. Her eyes shy away, too intimidated by his to hold onto his glare for very long. But during that moment, he’s wishing her the best — safety, fortune, success in exposing Starkweather. Whatever wishes that his brain can spit in a matter of a few seconds. In spite of the number of times he barked at her, or handled her too roughly while guiding her to refuge, he only hopes that she is alive once Starkweather is dead, that her evidence will tear him and his business to shreds. His family died as a result of getting tangled in his game — and she’s already neck-deep in it. Losing another person to it is the last thing he wanted to have happen tonight.

  
  
  
  


And just like that, he’s gone. The Journalist sighs and notices a sad deadness that lingers once he vanishes, remembering that she will be on her own again. She walks to the open window, closing it to keep the wind from flooding her home. To think how her night could’ve gone down if she didn’t swerve her car and see him running like an animal about to be pounced on (although in a way, that’s exactly what he was). The media wants to eternalize his criminal image, yet, in a strange way, he’s a hero. He protected her. Unlike Starkweather or the CCPD, he isn’t causing trouble; he doesn’t _mean_ any, at least. It’s really a favor what he’s doing, being the one who took care of the pests in her cop infested home. And the one who is currently on his way to find the man behind the horror. _Go get him, Cash. You got this._  
  
  
  


The CCPD’s precious Gary Schaffer — karma will turn its neck and bite that son of a bitch in the ass... someday. She hopes Cash will find him, too.

_______________________

The night grows heavier with every waking hour. Reporting for the night is done. The Journalist stares at her reflection in her bathroom mirror, just to try and convince herself that what’s real, _is_ real. Her eyes... the brown she sees looks dull. Dark circles dust her lower lids, a concerning purple to look at. Her rosy lipstick is smeared, stretched to the corner of her mouth. A messy clump of thin hairs sits above the rest of her hair, which she quickly combs out with her fingers. Leaning forward, she grabs the edges of her sink, rubbing her eyes. Is... is this really the woman that Cash looked at and spoke to? _I look like shit._ She grimaces, and so does the woman looking back at her, closing her eyes. This night is... changing her, doesn’t feel like herself anymore. Is this really happening? How is she going to sleep tonight, and when? Sighing, she opens them again, wiping away the smeared pigment from the corner of her lip with her thumb.

Her painted nails cling to the collar of her blazer, finding bloodstains interspersed along the stitching. She shivers. Cash... hopefully he’s still alive. He has to be. With a tug, she reveals her shoulder to the mirror, checking for the source of sharp throbbing that she feels there. A bruise that’s been hiding underneath her collar makes her frown, unaware of it beforehand, she realizes. But then it hit her: at some point, while driving her car, she remembers Cash squeezing the hell out of her shoulder, his teeth bared and other hand in the air ready to strike who he thought was another one of Starkweather’s men, obviously in a frenzy — only to realize that she wasn’t one of them, letting go when he recognized her. The thought makes her frown worse.

Scooping the box of evidence underneath her arm, she reaches for her bathroom light switch, watching her lifeless reflection disappear in the darkness. She tugs the flap of her blazer back over her shoulder and flattens it over her undershirt. She walks into her kitchen again, grabbing her keys and tucking them into one of her pockets. Deep, deep down, she wishes that Cash chose to leave Carcer with her. Who knows what nightmares lie ahead of him, or his whereabouts — provided he’s still alive. If he does find and kill Starkweather, where will he go? How will he escape? Even with those daunting questions in mind, she still believes in him. She’ll never forget that mean, seething scowl, the scar on his forehead, his scent, how pissed off he was. It was kind of him to help her back safely. Yet he was dead, a dead man… a fucking dead killer spoke to her, helped her, and he didn’t even have to. How unprecedented. Guilt stabs her like a dagger for not thanking him, or offering to somehow help him in return. They may not reunite down the road, but if this is a dream… it has to be... then it doesn’t matter. After all, he’s a dead man. Reality or fantasy, she can’t make up her mind. 

Everything feels heavy around her, all of a sudden. The box falls from her arm, but the sound doesn’t register in her mind. Something inside of her snaps like a stretched rubber band. A television static buzzes in her skull. That loud, deafening numbness which snowballed with every harrowing sight is taking effect now. Her senses deplete until they’re dried up to the point of nonexistence. Tears well in her eyes and stain her cold cheeks, the skin becoming clammy. She grabs a knife that’s nearby, her boot a makeshift scabbard. Not minding the foul odor in her hallway, she hurries down the stairs and pushes her front door open, beginning to walk down the street. She pulls the knife from her boot cuff, shaking violently and crying harder. Her nose turns red, her tears rolling in masses, from her face to the skin just before the hollows of her collarbones.

  
  
  
  
  
  


Nobody can be trusted, no place is safe. Everyone is a fucking liar. So full of shit. The authorities, the government, the system. Lies and bullshit everywhere. They’re after her, watching, prying behind closed doors… 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Maybe this isn’t a dream.

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed it! Feedback is always welcome. I’m still willing to edit this story.


End file.
